You are here

Offbeat

US computer graphics scientist wins Kyoto Prize

Associated Press|Published — Sunday 11 November 2012

TOKYO: An American regarded as a father of computer graphics, an Indian literary critic and a Japanese molecular cell biologist have received the Kyoto Prize, Japan’s highest private award for global achievement. The Inamori Foundation awarded its advanced technology prize yesterday to US computer scientist Ivan Sutherland, who developed the graphic interface program Sketchpad in 1963. Gayatri Chakrovoty Spivak , an Indian literary critic and professor at Columbia University, won the arts and philosophy prize. Yoshinori Ohsumi, a molecular biologist at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, received the basic sciences prize for his work on autophagy, a cell-recycling system that could be used to help treat neurodegenerative and age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s and cancer. The Kyoto-based Inamori Foundation was set up in 1984 by Kyocera Corp.’s founder, Kazuo Inamori.